More Evidence of the Botched Police Response to the Orlando Pulse Massacre

911 calls reveal chaotic scene, slow police response during Orlando club shooting the nypost.com headline proclaims with English understatement. As Jon Wayne Taylor revealed in a previous post, the police response to The Pulse nightclub terrorist attack was a cluster-you-know-what. “Whether or not it remained an active shooter situation,” Jon wrote, “it certainly remained an active dying situation. While the already outdated and discarded ‘wait and see’ policy was in effect in Orlando, multiple people bled to death.

The just released 911 tapes from the the Orange County Sheriff’s Office paint a vivid indeed tragic picture of wholly insufficient police response, probably due to analysis paralysis. Leading the unnecessary death of dozens of patrons. Like this:

“My son was shot in the club. … He is still in the bathroom. He is bleeding, and he got shot and nobody is going in for him,” said one caller to 911, almost three hours after the shooting began. “Nobody is doing anything for him.”

The dispatcher told him that a SWAT team was about to go inside the nightclub.

More than an hour-and-a-half after the shooting started, another man called dispatchers a second time, clearly frustrated that his ex-girlfriend hadn’t been rescued from a bathroom where she was trapped with almost 20 others, including two dead people.

“People are shot and dead. … Are you guys sending anybody there?” the man said. “They are all scared to death, and they all think they are going to die.”

The caller then said that his ex-girlfriend was texting that the gunman was there. The dispatcher told him to text back, asking if his ex-girlfriend meant in the bathroom or the club in general.

“She’s not answering,” he said. He waited for more than five minutes on the line with the dispatcher, getting no response from his ex-girlfriend, before the dispatcher told him she needed to free up the line.

This ain’t the half of it. Literally. Those are just two overflow 911 calls re-routed by the Orlando Police Department. For some reason. . .

The Orlando Police Department has yet to release its 911 calls. About two dozen news media companies including the Associated Press are suing for access to these public records as well as the communications between Mateen and the Orlando Police Department, during which authorities say Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

The media groups argue that the recordings will help the public evaluate the police response, but the city of Orlando claims the recordings are exempt under Florida public records law, and that the FBI insists releasing them may disrupt the ongoing investigation.

Ongoing investigation into a lone wolf terrorist who died at the scene? I don’t think so. The Orland Police Department and the FBI are engaged in a major coverup to protect their reputation and hold off lawsuits. Which are coming, for sure.

I fully expect the City of Orlando to settle the inevitable litigation out-of-court. But here’s the thing: police departments across the country need to learn from this deadly f-up. Just as it didn’t after Sandy Hook. I bet government officials wish they could bulldoze The Pulse as they did Sandy Hook Elementary School.

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Evil gov guys: Hey let’s have an armed guy go into a movie theater and shoot hell out of it. Surely then we’ll get the desired gun ban legislation we crave.

Evil gov guys: Ok, let’s have an armed guy go into an elementary school and shoot hell out of it. Surely then we’ll get it.

Evil gov guys: Well, now we gotta ratchet it up even more. Let’s have an armed muslim guy go into a gay club and shoot hell out of it…now that will do the trick.

My guess is the evil gov guys are probably in the pre-planning phase of a multiple white male christian armed group mass shooting of a BLM rally or something in that vein…maybe that’ll be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Fact: Governments are responsible for killing more people in the history of the world than any other person, gang, mafia, or other organized group.

Are you really so niave as to think they would not be above doing these things? I’m not out and out saying that they were orchestrated, but trust me, dig a little deeper than what MSNBC, CNN, FOX or some other mainstream outlet says happened and you’ll start to have more questions than answers.

Honestly, if you read the list presented in the link and honestly and truly ask yourself why the gov won’t answer these questions and just see how things don’t add up…then I’m sorry…I guess you chose the wrong pill.

He’s not saying it was a ‘hoax’ or didn’t happen, he’s just saying that what we’ve been TOLD happened may not be 100% accurate.

Anyone that accepts the .gov party line without at least raising an eyebrow and a good old fashioned “Hmmmmm” is asking for the tyranny that will eventually come.

The major point I’d disagree with, however, is that if all this were the case itself 100%, they’d already have the White Christian Right-Leaning Male doing the evil deeds. We are the most hated identity group in PC Political Culture right now, so it would be an easy sell.

In fact, that’s usually the initial story until the facts come out. That the facts don’t support that narrative is indication the stories are, to some degree at least, true.

So it’s quite alright for Robert Farago and TTAG to suggest that the evidence points to the police merely botching the response to the Orlando incident…but for me to suggest that they are actually accomplices or helped orchestrate and I’m off the reservation?

Gimme a break.

You can look at the list in the link and honestly say that the incident – as reported by all mainstream media and spouted by the “official” talking heads – went down the way they say?

So now we’ll have after action report 2.0 with new procedures 2.0, first LE there go in as quickly as possible and do not wait for extensive backup.
That was the (right) answer after Columbine but I guess some didn’t get the memo. Now there will be an expensive report developed with the same answer, after a several year delay.

If I understand your understanding, if I am being robbed or attacked, police have no obligation to protect me from either. But if both of use are being robbed or attacked, police now have a legal obligation to protect both of us?

Didn’t the court ruling mean that police have no obligation to prevent anyone, regardless of the number of those subjected to a crime, from being victims of criminals?

Police have a duty to respond to a crime in progress, with the caveat that if there are multiple crimes in progress, they get to prioritize. But in Orlando the only thing they prioritized was their own fat asses.

“Police have a duty to respond to a crime in progress, with the caveat that if there are multiple crimes in progress, they get to prioritize.”

No, they do not. Multiple court cases and life experience tell us otherwise. Los Angeles police were very public about the fact that they would not respond to calls in certain areas during the height of the Rodney King riots. San Jose police recently refused to assist Trump supporters when “protesters” assaulted and battered them. And then we have the recent case on the New York City subway where Joseph Lozito used his bare hands to subdue a knife-wielding spree-killer while two New York City cops watched from behind the glass door of the operator cab.

The only obligation that police have is some nebulous duty to protect society as a whole, which they can claim to fulfill when they do nothing more than investigate crimes after the fact and make a lame attempt to identify and capture criminals. Of course what that means in practical terms is that police have no duty at all to protect anyone … which is what other commenters are saying.

The fact they’re not obligated to protect any specific individual from any specific crime means their collective obligation to protect society is more theoretical than real. That’s the way it is with such things, for instance how relegating the 2nd Amendment to a “collective right” would mean no right at all. Likewise, when the NKVD was deporting people to Siberia in the name of protecting the collective, who actually saw any benefit?

When real, tangible, enforceable rights are stripped away from individuals in the name of some vague, hypothetical benefit to some amorphous, abstract collective, usually the ones being protected are the government and the government alone.

Sam I Am is correct, legally speaking. Aside from that, aren’t people here always saying that police need to take a less active role? Perhaps go back to a largely investigative role?

As long as we depend on the police to take out these guys people will have an excuse to not take responsibility for themselves. People ceding responsibility for their safety to the government is BAD for the 2nd Amendment.

Years after 9-11, police communications, medical, etc are not right. Something to do with $, follow it every time. I could never understand why the AF kept going to Motorola, with their $3,000 radios when we skipped Motorola and went with a better flight line radio at $300, all hell broke loose.

Biggest failure is in NOT PRACTICING. But that costs a lot of $. Plus I will bet the people at the top DO NOT KNOW the capabilities of their departments but they make the final decision. Thus the inability to act fast, they at the top are worried about how they will be viewed later. The mark of a political bureaucrat is NOT to make a decision.

Had a air contamination problem in Wing Headquarters building. My Fire Chief ordered evacuation as he was the OSC. When the Wing Commander heard the evacuation order he stopped it, later braced the Chief. I later explained to the WC why he was wrong, did not like that. I wasn’t there but there were pregnant women in the building, the WC was and is an ass.

Evidence of every police chief a liar claiming protecting citizens when they have no ability to, nor duty to defend, or even help citizens…reinforcing they only serve themselves and protect their pensions. Keep in mind folks this was one murdering religious nut bastard. Every police department is woefully unprepared. Mexican Police cannot defend against drug criminals while murder is just business. US folks think local PD can defend against 10-30 determined Jihadist. Mark the words, they’re coming and murdering over ideas will continue.

Nothing like denying citizens the right to lawfully self defend then leaving them to the wolves.

The primary function of police should be to capture suspects and fugitives from justice. The primary function of good people should be protecting themselves which absolutely requires that have the option to be armed in any fashion that they deem necessary.

In that environment police do not have to “storm the castle”, there is no need for police to be militarized, and there will be no criticism for police who “sit back”. That would attract rational people for police work.

Police departments who enforce disarmament laws have put themselves in a “no win” situation — in terms of appreciation from good people.

My brother lives in unincorporated county, abutting a municipal zone. His neighborhood gets no city tax benefits, not even a library card. His housing community has an HOA (don’t get me started). The nearest fire department is in the town, and 25 minutes away. Brother and neighbors formed a volunteer fire department. Many of the firefighters are full-time elsewhere, and provide expertise, training and sometimes response. By partnering with other bedroom communities and insurance companies, they established a non tax-supported capability (admittedly they are always in danger of not having full staffing in the station house 24/7), but they do not burden the county or town funding for fire protection.

I was a rural volunteer firefighter for 7 years back in the early to mid 80’s. Ultimately, the local ordinance was passed for our dept to get some county money, but it did not for YEARS.

We self-funded our department…or our local ‘community group’ funded it I should say. Those people worked their backsides off to provide the funding for that department, and we had one of the better departments in the county (as measured by response times, house ‘saves,’ insurance savings for residents in our district, etc).

It CAN work, but it takes a LOT of effort. We did a small number of annual big fund-raisers, but a big part was a weekly community event and lots of donations (gained by letter writing campaigns a few times a year).

Week in and week out, those people ran the event that kept us going. (We FF’s helped, but the lion’s share of the work was done by folks not ON the FD itself).

While the already outdated and discarded ‘wait and see’ policy was in effect in Orlando, multiple people bled to death.

I recently heard a federal LEO suggest that an “active shooter situation” is no longer an “active shooter situation” if the shooter stops shooting and appears to transition to negotiations. And we see the GINORMOUS down side to that ideology.

But the truth, as revealed in many cases, is that people inside such situations are usually dependent upon themselves for a while. Authorities often do not speak of this, but it’s what happens. There are cases where good guys rush in, but there are also many cases where they don’t.

Maybe as a Gulf War ex-infantryman, my concept of duty is skewed. If my badge says “Protect and Serve”, I would know a time may come when I have to “go over the top” and do something wickedly dangerous (like charge a gunman locked in a room). Hopefully, I’ve got a good partner or team to make it geometrically easier.

That said, what IF a couple Orlando cops had disregarded official advice and gone after the shooter (thus saving countless from bleeding out)?

Would they have been heroes? Or portrayed as thuggish cowboys and possibly jailed?

RF is saying exactly what I thought the day after all this occurred and the 3 hour time frame issue came up. I immediately thought LAWSUIT(S) and I’m not talking about the ones the various media outlets are filing. If it had been an active shooter situation at the local donut shop, I guarantee it would not have taken 3 hours to resolve. Talk about your Keystone Cops. I would guess there have already been mass defections from Orlando PD to other LE agencies in the area.

1. Yes they do. 6 figures without a degree and a blank check of benefits it’s enough. Forget that it’s all volunteer also? Dont sign up if you can’t handle it

2.lots of these “Monday morning quarterbacks” has spent their fair time “in the shit”, so pound sand buddy.

3. Have you seen or interacted with a cop recently? They are the standing army the founding fathers foresaw and specifically prohibited.

Basically, you are dead wrong on all your points. But maybe if you kiss some more cop ass they will go easy on you when they come to take your guns/decide to enforce draconian bullshit victimless laws.

Except that most of the time they do. Virtually all their force training is based on special operations. The base mantra for cops is, “Surprise, overwhelming force, violence of action”, for every situation. Oh, and there is all the ex-military gear they love. Did you miss the submission about the small cop force that required each patrol office have a sniper-rigged rifle available? Cops are considered “para military” units. “Para” is not Latin for “Let’s pretend”.

It’s easier to blame the white police or white Christians, instead of talking responsibility for your own safety and own actions or in action during a shooting situation.
So no one knew any first aid techniques?

Everyone has the human right to self-defense. But many people don’t use that right when they need to.
Harvey Milk said every gay person should have a gun.
Before the Pink Pistols it was the Log Cabin Republicans who said gays should have guns.

Gays are socialist progressive in their political orientation. Which means they wait in line for the government to protect them.

Gays’ political positions tend to be influenced highly by their parents: those who are treated fairly and affirmed by their parents tend to follow their parents’ positions, and those who are treated like crap tend to reject their parents’ positions. As a result, more gays do indeed tend to be progressive.